Bolted connections between thin-walled and thick elements made of cold-formed section

The market of self-supporting storage rack structures is extremely competitive requiring a constant evolution towards the development of bigger and higher projects for sake of economic optimisation. Up to now, such structures are mainly composed of cold-formed thin-walled profiles as primary elements so as to reduce the total weight. However, the need of bigger and taller structures that are nowadays appearing cause higher internal loads in the columns and so an increase of the column cross-section dimensions, which cannot be anymore considered as thin-walled, is required. This leads to uncommon connections where thin-walled cold-formed beams are connected to “thick” column profiles. The proposed paper presents studies conducted on bolted beam-to-column hinged connections between thick and thin-walled profiles. First, a critical review of European normative context and, in particular, of the component method as recommended design approach for joints is presented. Then, based on the available equations, design recommendations for the studied joint are proposed. Finally, an alternative connection is presented and design recommendations are given.